What engagement banking needs is REAL engagement

by. Ron Shevlin

Jeanine Skowronski at American Banker penned an interesting article recently titled What Engagement Banking Needs Is Less Engagement. In it, she wrote:

“I can’t help thinking the money management moment has passed and that, moving forward, engagement banking – a future model fo”r the industry that PFM is a big part of – would benefit from less engagement. This might reflect my lifelong aversion to charts and graphs. Or it could be related to a suspicion that many financial firms want to ‘engage’ with me simply to obtain information marketable to a third party. This could be one more instance where terminology is failing the industry, given that the word ‘engagement’ denotes a level of commitment not all consumers may be looking for in their banking relationships. Maybe something like ‘empowerment banking’ or ‘choice banking’ would be a better descriptor.”

I totally understand where Jeanine is coming from and why she would feel that way. She even cites a study that found that 46% of consumers want technology to simplify their lives.

My take: The problem here — as Jeanine brings up — is in the terminology. We’re not using the term “engagement” appropriately,

Customer engagement has been a pet topic of this blog for year. Back in January 2007 I tried to define the concept of customer engagement as:

“Repeated — and satisfying — interactions that strengthen the emotional connection a consumer has with a brand (or product, or company).”

The key phrase there is “emotional connection.” Simply interacting more often with a customer is not engagement. Only meaningful interactions create, or build on, the emotional connection.

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